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16th October 1958.
Dear Dr. Rosenfeld,
I feel like writing to thank you for your paper and for the way you dealt with the questions raised. I agree with Dr. Gillespie that it is very important that this subject should be studied as a subject and not just referred to as it has been in a casual way in the description of cases.
The clinical material in your case rang almost too many bells and I suppose everyone felt that you were talking about the sort of things that happen in their analytic work almost daily and giving some guidance as to how one can best proceed. It amused me when my first case this morning started up with the following remark: “Yesterday I left you thinking that you were going to have a coronary thrombosis, but you are alive; today I am the one just about to die that way.” He is a man in whom hypochondriacal symptoms play a large part.
I was not altered by what happened in the discussion in regard to my feelings about the word envy, which I still think adds nothing whatever to the full meaning of oral sadism and which I think introduces the complication of a serious nature, making communication between Kleinians and non-Kleinians very difficult. You will probably agree that it is very important that this matter should be thoroughly thrashed out.
Thanking you again,
Yours very sincerely,